Competing periodization

Chinese historians are familiar with the date range of 1368 to 1912. It marks the period when China was ruled by the Ming, then Qing dynasty. Historians also recognize 1640 as an important date—that’s when Ming rule ended and the Qing era began.

This course focuses on the three centuries from 1450 to 1750. This is the era when Western European empires began their rise to new levels of dominance. However, that narrative doesn’t really fit China, which was an empire before 1450, and an empire after 1750. That’s a problem with the periodization (the way time is divided) of this course. Still, we can try and turn that difference into an advantage by looking at this era from a Chinese perspective.

China’s turn inland

During the 1300s, China had increasingly become a maritime power, which means they had a strong navy. Admiral Zheng He had led massive fleets across the Indian Ocean in search of trade and treasure. But in the 1400s, the Ming emperors turned China’s resources inland. In 1433, the emperor put a stop to ocean expeditions, decommissioning or burning most of Zheng’s ships.

Historians used to describe this as “China’s turn inward.” But many of today’s scholars prefer to think of the period “China’s turn inland.” The first label suggests retreat, the second suggests resourcefulness. Maintaining a huge navy was expensive and, from the Ming point of view, unnecessary as their greatest threats and opportunities were inland. Also, there was no need to travel, as China produced everything it needed at home.

This land-based mindset continued through the rest of the Ming and later the Qing dynasty. The 300 years from 1450 to 1750 was not a period of withdrawal, decline, or European domination. It was a period of inland expansion that provided new wealth, power, and land to an already formidable empire.

Rethinking periodization can help us avoid some misconceptions about China. Chinese society is sometimes characterized as rigid and even unchanging, shaped by ideas that rejected change and instead demanded obedience and duty. That characterization is inaccurate. China often followed a different path from societies in other parts of Afro-Eurasia. However, that’s because dynastic leaders were responding to unique forces for change, many of them coming from Chinese peasants, as we will see.

The Ming dynasty

China was ruled by the Mongols before the Ming dynasty began in 1368. An outbreak of the plague swept through China in the 1340s. This deadly plague arrived on top of many other problems. The Chinese middle class resented the Mongols for excluding them from positions of power and the peasants felt oppressed by high taxes. Plague, and social unrest, led to a rebel movement known as the Red Turban army. This army drove the Mongols out of most of China by 1368. Its peasant leader, Zhu Yuanzhang, declared himself the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. He took the title of the Hongwu Emperor and ruled from 1368 to 1398—a dynasty that would last for 300 years.

The Ming emperors had a lot to occupy their attention. The Hongwu Emperor had lived as an oppressed peasant under Mongol rule. He knew from personal experience the power of peasants, especially when they were hungry. To ensure stability and access to affordable food, he focused on building China’s infrastructure. The rulers who followed, especially the Yongle Emperor, who ruled from 1402 to 1424, prioritized agricultural expansion and improvement.

Agricultural stability and invasion were constant concerns of the Ming emperors. They might have defeated the Mongols, but other peoples from Central Asia still wanted Chinese land. The Yongle Emperor led five raids into Central Asia to ensure China would not be threatened again.

The Yongle Emperor promoted long-distance maritime trade. Some sources suggest his navy had 3,500 ships, the largest of which were over 400 feet long. That’s about the length of a football field. By contrast, the Spanish armada—the largest fleet assembled in Europe in this period—consisted of only 130 ships, none longer than 140 feet. Under admiral Zheng He, China’s navy traveled deep into the Indian Ocean and as far as the East African coast.

However, state sponsorship of long-distance ocean trade didn’t last long. By the 1430s, the two big problems of agriculture and the threat of invasion from Central Asia had worsened. The population of China doubled under Ming rule, which meant China needed to produce more food. The emperors who succeeded the Yongle Emperor built a 200,000 person team of government officials to help run and protect the empire. External trade continued, but mostly with neighbors in Southeast and Central Asia.

Because of these policies, the Ming state was probably the most prosperous country on Earth in this period. It allowed a time of great cultural advancement. After 1450, some of the world’s greatest literature came from China. One example is Journey to the West, a fantastic account of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang’s journey to India that inspired the modern anime series Dragon Ball Z.

Unfortunately for the Ming emperors, even as cultural achievements grew, economic and political problems began to threaten their dynasty. While the early Ming Emperors had avoided overtaxing peasants, things changed over the next 200 or so years. By the early 1620s, a heavy tax burden fell on peasants. Meanwhile, infighting among China’s many officials divided them into opposing groups. When one political group took control, they would sometimes put their rivals in prison.

Also, protecting the empire from invasions was expensive. There were new threats beyond Central Asia, particularly from Japan. From the 1590s, the Chinese spent a lot of money helping the Korean government stop attacks from Japan. (On any map showing Asia, you can see how the Korean peninsula points toward Japan, making it the easiest path to China.)

This difficult situation got a lot worse when a series of famines struck in 1628. The Ming government couldn’t afford food for its peasants. As their agricultural base broke down, a military dynasty from Central Asia known as the Manchus brought an army into China, supposedly to help the Ming government. Instead, they took power themselves and formed the Qing dynasty.

Qing: The Manchu dynasty

Like the Mongol dynasty that ruled China before 1344, the Manchus were technically invaders. However, in the chaos surrounding the decline of the Ming dynasty, many Chinese people welcomed them. In return, the early Qing rulers were careful not to upset the Chinese peasants as they slowly took over the country.

It helped that the Qing had a very capable emperor early on. The Kangxi Emperor ruled the Qing dynasty from 1661 to 1722. He decreased the size of his army to keep costs low, which allowed him to freeze taxes—a very popular measure. His court also managed to balance a sense of tradition with innovation. The Kangxi Emperor ordered scholars to put together the first real dictionary of Chinese characters and funded a revival of poetry and culture based on Chinese history. He was also interested in technology from any region, and he enjoyed European clocks. As a result of all this work, China returned to prosperity, with peasants enjoying a higher standard of living than almost any other society of the time.

The Kangxi Emperor was succeeded by his son, the Yongzheng Emperor, who ruled from 1722 to 1735. His grandson, the Qianlong Emperor, ruled from 1735 to 1796. Though China was the center of their realm, they ruled an increasingly multi-ethnic state that included many people in Central Asia, a number of whom were Muslim. They tried to keep this empire together by giving prosperity and demanding obedience. They promoted Confucian ideals and supported Muslim, Buddhist, and other religious practices. Confucianism is an ancient Chinese philosophy about acting with virtue, or goodness, in society.

Overall, anyone looking at China in 1750 would see a state that was peaceful, wealthy, and larger than it had ever been before. As late as 1791, the Qianlong Emperor rejected the need to trade with Britain. He offered this simple explanation: “Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders,” he said. “There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce.”